Totem
by Orthodoxy
Summary: In a fit of anger Haruhi assigns Kyon another hopeless and arbitrary task. Itsuki interferes at length. You know the routine by now. Implied Itsuki x Kyon


Totem

Kyon went out until he was under the shadow of the bare trees and let the blade of the shovel down onto the frozen earth. It struck with a flinty, metallic sound; the death knell of his illusion that this would be five minutes' work. Experimentally, hoping against hope, he scraped at the mauled remains of the leaf litter, first with the spade and then, when it proved to be a poor servant, the edge of one foot. Soon he had cleared for himself a little plot of dark, hard mud, perhaps just too small for a grave. With distaste he noticed his fingers were already tingling. He rested the spade against his legs, swaying cautiously from foot to foot, pressing his elbows to his side and breathing clouds of white vapour into his cupped hands. He had all but given up on thinking he could keep his face warm. Lacking any great enthusiasm to begin to pace around the edge of the space several times, scoring an outline in the dirt with the spade as he went. Once or twice he would cast glances back at the distant house for a sign of someone calling him back, mindful in some wordless way that to break the earth and begin would as good as condemn him to finish.

At the house only the downstairs windows were illuminated. Everything else was buried in light from a sky that was advancing in tones of lead, tinged at the edges with frost. The gaunt quiet reminded him of closed space, but radiant and glittering rather than closed space's lurid, dead glow. Thinking of it in those terms made his stomach flutter. He shook his head and tried to forget that place he'd been shown. There was not a breath of wind but the still air had long since begun to bite, sapping at every inch of exposed flesh until it was raw. Looking at the house some primitive part of him feared that if that light went out he'd be stranded here, cut off from the world forever. He was not inclined to laugh at such a childish idea any more.

As he watched a light came on in one of the upstairs rooms. The warm glow made everything feel colder, the same way as starlight is cold. In the next instant Haruhi had appeared and stood at the window, arms crossed and, Kyon could tell without having to look, feet planted heroically far apart. The way she carried herself it was as if she were surveying the occasion of some hard-won, inevitable triumph in approval. All the scene needed was the crowd gathered below chanting "DU-CE! DU-CE! DU-CE!"

It was too far to tell if she was watching him. Even if she were the urge to leap into action so as to escape her wrath, in so much as Kyon ever suffered from it, was curiously absent. Instead part of him wanted to look pathetic and deserving of pity, alive to the possibility the sight of him so wretched and shivering might yet excite a spark of pity inside Haruhi. He caught himself actually stooping, shoulders hunched, one hand feebly drawn around himself as if to shield his body from the cold, the other holding the spade slack at his side, a hangdog expression on his face.

Reflexively, without being prompted, he shuddered, overcome with disgust. If such a display could eke out contempt even in him he dreaded the thought that Haruhi had just seen him. As if to dispel what had just happened he turned his back on the house, taking up the spade and driving it into the ground with both hands, gritting his teeth when it bit barely a few inches into the mud. He planted his foot at the back of the blade, taking three solid blows from his heel to drive it in to the hilt, immediately springing onto the handle with both hands and forcing the thing down as if at a water pump. With a ripping, popping, noise a block of earth came free, crumbling at the edges as it tipped off the spade. Not stopping to appreciate what he'd done he took up the tool again, impervious to how aggressively cold the wooden handle was, struggling with the earth several more times before he'd secured a foothold just big enough for him to stand in.

Feet pressed together he guessed he must have gone down by maybe ten inches. His breath was seething through set teeth, half from the work, half in anticipation of what he was about to do; a piece of theatre that he let convince him. The urge to finish quickly, to hack his way through to the end and run back had evaporated, replaced with a grim, unsettling satisfaction. It was the pleasure of gritting your teeth and hanging on in the face of something you didn't think you could stand. He struck the spade into the ground in defiance of the cold and Haruhi and stood back, admiring what little he had accomplished. Nothing he'd faced so far was enough to make him cower, there was enough pride in him that he wouldn't allow this to become the first.

In another minute his quiet storm of emotion had ebbed, broken up between the chill climbing into his limbs and the gradual reassertion his native temperament. He went back to digging as if for the first time, unsure and unconcerned as to whether it was to keep warm or to placate Haruhi. One seemed as good as the other. He was at the bottom, he reflected, a reasonable man; these spasms of emotion seemed to leave an uncomfortable residue behind them, something wordless and shameful. But he was reasonable enough to forget that in time as well.

Gradually, effort by effort, the past few minutes emptied in his mind. The work grew to encompass his thoughts, running now along practical lines; his attention sunk entirely into the business of enlarging the pit he found himself striding about. So it was with a jarring sense of dislocation and annoyance, the same as being wrenched from a shallow sleep or interrupted at the crescendo of a piece of music, that he discovered someone stealing up on him from the house. Almost a physical sensation somewhere in his stomach, his disappointment deepened, twisted, and finally stuck fast when he saw exactly who it was.

Before him Koizumi was coming out of the frozen wastes, more terrible than the Mongols, wrapped up in a coat that looked warmer than Kyon's, hands in his pockets, and with one end of the thick scarf that encircled his neck dangling down his front. Never had a more content and peaceful-looking raider come to slake his thirst among the innocent. He was in no rush, Kyon noticed, happy to descend upon his prey in his own time, Quixotically pleased with something.

In response he began working furiously, as if he were trying to dig his way out of sight.

"You can go back and tell her I'm almost done," Kyon said over the noise of the spade, without looking up. Koizumi came up to the edge of the hole, waiting until there was a lull before he answered.

"Actually she didn't send me." Kyon chose not to look up and see the boy's expression, his tone said everything.

"Oh." Kyon sounded uninterested. He grit his teeth and hurled a clod of spoil onto the pile beside him.

"Asahina mentioned she wanted to check on you, I persuaded her to let me come instead."

The shovel had stopped in Kyon's hands. He looked up to see Koizumi beaming down at him, the urge to leap out of the pit and seize the boy by his collar only partly vanishing when he realised why Itsuki was smiling. Kyon sighed, drained twice over.

"Oh," he said, "a joke."

"I'm sorry, I couldn't resist."

"Wonderful," he began his task again, mechanically, less sure of himself for the fun being had at his expense.

"I did tell her you might want some tea when you were finished, though. She seemed quite pleased with that."

Kyon regarded him again without stopping, skeptical. Itsuki's face broke into an apologetic smile and he held his hands up.

"Honestly."

"Hmm," Kyon was noncomittal. He watched the esper again for a moment from the corner of one eye, working deliberately until the task took up the better part of his attention again. When he looked up again Koizumi had wandered out of his sight, Kyon letting him go until curiosity got the better of him. He stole a glance over one shoulder, furtive, catching the boy strolling away along the treeline, craning his neck up at something overhead. It was too much to hope Itsuki might forget him, Kyon realised, unable to take much pleasure in the temporary respite.

It lasted a minute. Between the blows of the shovel he tried to listen, unable to shake off the impression Itsuki had stopped some way off to watch him, unseen. He counted out another sixty seconds without anything happening, scuffing the edge of his shoe against the loose soil around his feet in frustration as he lost track of his tally halfway through. Halfheartedly he started digging again, levering a rock free which he scooped up and planted, totem-like, at the top of the spoil heap. The dirt from the thing had smudged his fingers and he spent a moment trying to brush them clean against his coat. At last he had had enough, convinced he could at least work better with Koizumi in plain sight. He raised himself up and called out.

"Well?"

Far off there was a reply.

"Yes?"

Kyon looked back over his shoulder.

"Why don't you tell me what you're plotting?"

"The stillness reminds me," Itsuki replied, turning around, apparently oblivious to the accusation in Kyon's tone.

"Closed space." Kyon found himself finishing the sentence.

"Isn't it," Koizumi agreed, coming to stand alongside him again. "Almost, at least. The air's too crisp. It's as if someone left the door open."

"Mikuru, perhaps," Kyon said, secretly enjoying the excuse to say her name, "not Haruhi."

"You're half right, Suzumiya is too meticulous... in her own way," Koizumi chose not to elaborate, finding something far off in the grey distance to capture his attention.

"And the other half?" Kyon asked, his tone one of someone who felt entitled to an answer.

Itsuki appeared as if he were debating something inside himself, his expression flickered with disapproval before his usual mood seemed to return. He nodded at the hole in which Kyon was busy.

"You might never finish at this rate. I did look for another spade, in case you're wondering. It seems Suzumiya has prepared for that eventuality, however."

"Are you planning to stand here and watch me the whole time?"

Itsuki said nothing.

"I know that's what you're doing," he weighed the shovel in his hands as a statement of intent.

Again Itsuki was silent and Kyon chose not to press the matter. He looked down at how far he'd got, almost past his knees now, deep enough to disappear if he had the space to lie down.

"How deep did she tell you to d-"

"Until she couldn't see me any more," Kyon interrupted, his voice clipped from the effort as he hacked away at the inside of the hole, the loose dirt collecting noisily around his feet. After another minute he was out of breath, sweat beading on his forehead, taking in lungfuls of the freezing air until his chest ached. As he straightened up he cupped his pale hands together in front of his mouth and breathed on them, his eyes squeezed shut.

"Go back inside," lacking the patience to indulge the esper any more the words came easily. "I'll manage."

"Come on," it was an invitation. Itsuki planted a foot at the edge of the hole, plucking one hand from its glove and reaching down to Kyon with it as if to help him out. It waved tantalisingly close, if only Kyon could have forgotten who it belonged to.

"Just for a minute," Koizumi added, he turned the hand he held out a fraction as if to emphasise his point.

"How long has it been?" Kyon asked at last.

"Long enough."

The spade fell against the ground with a dull, muffled noise. Kyon sighed and set one foot at the crumbling lip of the hole to lever himself out and, without looking too closely, reached up to take Itsuki's hand. As the fingers closed around his Kyon gave a note of surprise, amazed at how warm Itsuki was. The cold didn't seem to have touched him at all. In the next moment, before he was ready he found himself wrenched free, sprawling out of the hole and lunging for his footing, still anchored to Koizumi by the boy's iron grip.

"Here," before Kyon could extricate himself Itsuki was in front of him, almost chest-to-chest, lazily encircling him in the scarf he'd been wearing a moment ago. Warmth banked up against Kyon's neck, lapping at his chin, seductive enough to steal away his caution. His cry of protest died in his throat as the feeling settled around him, sinking him up to his eyes, rooting him to the spot. Itsuki was fussing, folding cloth over cloth, tightening here, loosening there; warm, strong fingers dancing around Kyon's neck, occasionally brushing against the cold skin delicately enough to make Kyon shiver.

"All right, that's enough," roused to his senses Kyon batted Itsuki's hands away and stepped back, toying with the scarf to his own satisfaction, unwilling to leave the esper's handiwork unchallenged. Even so he shrugged his shoulders and allowed himself to luxuriate in the feeling for a moment, unburdened until he saw Koizumi holding out both his gloves to him.

"Should I help you put these on as well?"

Without thinking Kyon snatched them out of his hand. He regretted it at once, not thinking to ask what Koizumi would do without them. Feebly he made an attempt to give them back without saying as much, left holding them out to thin air as Koizumi stepped smartly out over the lip of the hole and dropped down almost without a sound.

At once he took up the spade, testing the weight of it in his hands before drawing in a deep breath as if he were pleased.

"We are servant soldiers, are we not?" He looked out expansively over the landscape, speaking as if to an invisible listener, clearly delighted with the words. Kyon didn't attempt to make sense of it. He stopped watching the esper and circumspectly tried to slip both gloves on without making a noise.

That said Itsuki immediately took up the shovel and began driving it into the earth like a piston, working with such force that Kyon's first instinct was to assume something was wrong. He fought the urge to call out, the words staying inside his chest. The impression that Itsuki was secretly furious played on his fears briefly before vanishing as he tried to apprehend it. Uneasily, Kyon found himself absorbed in the intensity Koizumi was bringing to the task. There was, he barely admitted, something of an allure to it - something so unashamedly vigorous and physical that Itsuki had sunk himself into. Kyon coughed, trying to break the spell, and made himself look away.

Even as he worked the boy's face didn't reveal a trace of emotion, only the same relentless, patient contentment he always seemed to radiate. He continued like this until Kyon was aghast, half at Koizumi's apparent inability to tire, and half at the fact he was going on so long that Haruhi might catch on as to what was happening. Somewhere between the two of them he had managed to become caught.

"You're proving to be an interesting case, Kyon," Itsuki said at last, speaking quickly between breaths. Panting, he straightened up and folded his palms on the summit of the spade's handle. It was a hard comment to read, especially from Koizumi. But even as the words made Kyon uneasy he was for the moment more reassured that Itsuki had shown himself to be human again. The boy's fingers were flexing back and forth as he spoke, trying to work out the chill which had settled in them; even he had his limit. Momentarily overcome by his reassurance he wanted to ask what Itsuki had meant, stopping short of actually speaking.

"A lot of people are beginning to think that you're the real key to this whole situation. They're wondering," Itsuki went on. "Everyone in this situation is working for someone else: myself, Nagato, Asahina..." he looked up, straight into Kyon's eyes, white breath appearing between barely parted lips. "Why not you, Kyon?"

The gaze fixed him for a moment, striking him almost as much as the accusation. He struggled for something to say.

"Nothing you say ever makes any sense, you know," Kyon almost laughed at it.

Itsuki bent back over, hurling another chunk of spoil onto the pile. It had grown past Kyon's knees since they began talking.

"An interesting case," Koizumi repeated, lingering over the words. "Between the two of us, I've been asked some very sensitive questions regarding you. It's the opinion of some that given the circumstances you should already have gone insane by now."

"I'm sorry to disappoint," Kyon replied, finally, finding it hard to believe what he was hearing, unsure how to take any of it. An insult, a compliment, a threat?

Itsuki laughed, generously, and settled on the edge of the hole. He swallowed.

"I can assure you there's no offence in the suggestion," he paused, breathing heavily two or three times before going on. "Insanity was only one of the likely outcomes that were predicted. I know that Nagato has spoken in broadly the same terms. If you'll permit me an analogy to make things clear..."

"Why start now?" Kyon asked, becoming irritated in spite of his curiosity. Nevertheless, Itsuki smiled at it.

"For an untrained conscript who has been thrown into battle for the first time in his life certain mental states could be logically expected to follow. Confusion, terror, rage, apathy, despair; perhaps even selfless fervour, heroism, holiness... The particular state itself is unimportant, what remains constant is the rupture in the previous mental register of that individual; the effect of moving from a world he knew to one which violates every assumption of that former life. The assumption that nobody will try to kill him, that the person he's sitting speaking with won't be snatched out of existence, that he can go to sleep and expect to wake up the nex-"

"I get the point," Kyon said, holding up one hand. Itsuki gave an apologetic expression and continued.

"So it is with someone unused to such a situation. For an individual whose profession is war, however, the same would not follow. A certain detatched, clinical manner would already be expected to have overtaken him. Surgeons do not faint at the sight of blood," he said the last phrase impressively, as if it contained within it everything that needed to be said. He looked at Kyon as if to emphasise what was coming. "Since meeting Suzumiya you have learned how slender a thread by which everything that exists now hangs, and how inextricably you are implicated in all this. I would submit that is more terrifying than anything within the bounds of a sane, ordered, rational universe."

Itsuki paused, perhaps to let that sink in, watching Kyon for some reaction briefly before apparently giving up and continuing.

"To observe your behaviour one would have to conclude your life is more or less the same as it ever was. Your moods, your ambitions, your fears, your desires... nothing which could have been expected to happen has transpired. You have a God by the ear and yet you seem completely unfazed, unreflective; entirely without even curiosity. There doesn't seem to be the slightest temptation to try and escape this responsibility with which you've been burdened, or to use your position to any particular advantage." Kyon shuffled from foot to foot briefly, trying to coax the warmth back into his limbs. "You can perhaps see why from the outside it looks unusual. A number of my colleagues are unwilling to put it down to sheer improbability, they find other explanations for your own detatchment much more elegant. Of course, if this is true, it raises the most profound questions. Questions of which you are, unfortunately, the only conduit to any answers."

Kyon realised Itsuki had levelled his gaze at him again.

"And you're here to get them," Kyon asked, but it was not a question.

"Yes and no," Koizumi's tone made it sound as if he were agreeing to something utterly innocuous. His manner had suddenly become cheerful. "In my capacity as a member of the Agency I'm afraid I've already proved incapable of carrying out my mission by telling you this. As an individual, however... I am curious."

Kyon wasn't sure how to take this, and Itsuki seemed content to leave it at that, sheepish perhaps of adding to everything he had said. They remained in silence for a while as Koizumi continued to work, Kyon steadily growing colder in spite of the scarf and gloves.

"Here," unbidden, Kyon went up to the edge of the hole and pulled one glove off, offering his hand down to Itsuki. This time he was surprised by how cold Koizumi's hand was. He shucked the other glove off and pressed them back at the boy. Itsuki smiled and shook his head, cupping his hands around Kyon's and pushing them back to his chest. He stepped forward as he did it until they were face to face.

"What's wrong with you. Your hands are freezing," Kyon turned away as he spoke. "Just take them."

Itsuki had leaned forward, almost imperceptibly. His lips hovered beside Kyon's ear, breath hissing between the words, voice barely a whisper. He was smiling, Kyon could tell.

"What we do here is forever."

With that Itsuki's hands slipped from around his and he stepped away, his back turned.

"What's that supposed to m-"

Itsuki nodded towards the house, shrugging as if to the inevitability of this moment. Haruhi had appeared, striding out towards him as if parting a mob, impossibly purposeful. Kyon glanced around, hopelessly, as if for something to hide him. Itsuki had gone back to the edge of the hole and sat down at it with his legs dangling inside. After a brief struggle with himself Kyon followed, planting himself beside the boy and folding his hands in his lap, given over to waiting. One foot was tapping against the dirt, drumming out a muffled, rhythmless beat. As he shifted his position, wedging his hands underneath his legs to try and keep the cold out, he noticed Koizumi quite blatantly slide across a few inches until they were almost shoulder to shoulder.

Before he could muster the words for his disbelief Haruhi had descended, Jove-like.

"What is this? I didn't expect you to actually do it," she declared, exasperated. Kyon craned his head back and looked at her momentarily, finding her towering up into the faintly glowing sky. "You'll have to fill this in later, we can't just leave it."

"Fine," Kyon agreed in the lifeless manner best suited to enraging her, too numbed by now to work up any enthusiasm for her sake.

She leaned down, seizing the end of the scarf with one hand hard enough to have Kyon clawing at the loops around his neck.

"Where did you get this from?"

"Ah, that would be mine, I'm afraid," Itsuki answered, looking up at her.

"Yours?" Haruhi seemed more puzzled than anything else.

Itsuki nodded and Haruhi kept watching Kyon without saying anything; she was agitated, as if trying to work something out. Finally she dropped the end of the scarf she was holding with an exclamation of disbelief, turned smartly and disappeared back towards the house.

The footsteps receeded. A little after there was the sound of the door closing, far off. Itsuki glanced over his shoulder.

"I think that means I've escaped," Kyon said, hopefully. With one finger he was tracing the front of his neck, head craned back until the air had him pressing his chin back into the scarf.

"Perhaps."

Neither of them spoke.

"There doesn't seem much point hanging around out here any more," Kyon said, suddenly businesslike. He made as if to get up. "I'm going b-"

"I'd..." Kyon stopped, watching the boy as he spoke, "appreciate it if you didn't mention what I've said to anyone. Including Nagato. Information has a way of getting around, and if it were discovered I'd told you this my own position could become..." there was an amused expression on his lips, "problematic."

It took Kyon a second to rediscover the thread of their discussion.

"I suppose this means that you don't believe what your superiors are telling you."

After a moment of Itsuki saying nothing Kyon sighed heavily and settled back beside him, prompted by some spectre of gratitude. If the esper noticed he made no sign of it.

"I'm not sure it would make any difference. Suzumiya has made her choice," there was a pause, Kyon heard Itsuki give a hollow little cough at the back of his throat. "Perhaps we all have."

There was a weight around one of his hands. Beside him Itsuki had clasped his fingers around Kyon's glove, his cheeks flushed from the cold.

"What? What are you-"

"Kyon is Kyon," he said with an air of completeness. He cocked his head, as if he were pleased with that.

For a moment Kyon didn't know what to make of it: his hand lay there, fixed under Itsuki's, the same inertia seeming to spread to his whole body. There was the unsettling feeling of suddenly being somewhere unfamiliar, as if without realising it he had wandered away from what he knew. The cold seemed to press in on him. He breathed into the haze of the scarf, enjoying the sudden warmth against his face as it subsided. Beneath everything else the hand was still there. As much as he wanted to tear his own out from beneath it he knew it would change nothing; whatever had put it there would not disappear so easily.

He made as if to speak, unable to bring himself to say anything, unsure of what he had to say. More than anything he wanted just to be silent and hope this would pass, tormented by some part of him that would not be still. His tongue clicked in his mouth: none of this had to happen, if Itsuki had just stayed inside...

Even as he thought of it he wondered whether it was just the effect of the cold and fatigue wearing on him. Still, he did it - a very little thing. He was silent for a while, finally lifting his hand from Koizumi's grasp and shucking the glove off. He hesitated, his breath coming in shallow gasps, realising his hand was trembling. Finally, looking away as he did it, he nested his bare fingers with Itsuki's. The stillness seemed to deepen, unbroken either by the hammering inside his chest or the rattle of his breathing. For an instant he was convinced he had done the wrong thing.

He felt the boy freeze for a moment, the smooth fingers going rigid. Kyon still couldn't bring himself to meet Itsuki's gaze, he scraped one heel against the dirt so there would be something beside the silence. The hand tightened up around his.

Somehow, Kyon realised, he was still all there. He gave a brief, dying laugh in his throat, wanting to take his hand back.

"It's nothing. Don't follow me around like this. I don't need your help," he said the things all at once, wanting to say more. From the corner of his eye he could tell Itsuki was looking at him without being able to see the expression on his face. "And don't say things like that."

"That?"

"Whatever it was you said before. I don't care."

Itsuki leaned in, shoulder pressing against Kyon's. He lowered his voice.

"I can tell you again, if you've forgotten."

"Enough."

Almost before Itsuki had finished speaking Kyon was gathering himself to his feet, hoping their hands would slip apart as he stood up. However he did it the esper saw the trap coming, standing up beside Kyon and waiting for a moment before quite suddenly relinquishing his grip. For Kyon the sensation was like reaching one foot out for a step that wasn't there. He stood for a moment, collecting himself as Koizumi went back to the hole and slung the spade over one shoulder.

"I'll take this back," he said, starting off towards the house with the air of someone who was unashamed of what they'd just done.

Alone again, Kyon wasn't sure whether to be proud or not. It was impossible to know whether he had disgraced himself just now; the whole affair seemed like a farce from beginning to end. What could you do in the face of such a pointless mess? He shivered. At the least it was not worth freezing over. Even if he were wrong one had to be alive to atone.

He told himself he would think more on it later, knowing it wasn't true. In the meanwhile he would settle for certain things: warmth, tea, Asahina, forgetfulness... Kyon clapped his hands together and began walking.

--end 


End file.
